Continuing my
report on Carolyn and my rock-intensive tour of Washington . . . .
We departed
our luxurious motel after a nice
breakfast and headed back north, to intersect U.S. 12. This pleasant highway crosses the Cascades at
White Pass, skirting the southern margin on Mt. Rainier National Park in the
process. Very green and pastoral, in
contrast to Yakima into which eventually debouches. From there we went to Ephrata and checked
into excellent rooms in a Best Western motel (Carolyn had done all arranging in
advance). And then, it being still
early, we headed north into the famous Channeled Scablands of geological legend
J. Harland Bretz; specifically, to Dry Falls State Park.
Most of you
already know that the weird topography of the Scablands is the result of
erosion caused by a series of catastrophic floods, released toward the end of
the last ice age (~15,000 years ago) when glacial lakes broke through ice barriers
penning them in. The result was a network of “coulees”, which are very large
valleys cut dramatically into flat-lying lava flows of the Columbia Plateau
basalts (which Google if confused).
Anyway, if
you only have a few hours to obtain a taste of the Scablands, Dry Falls is a
splendid place to do it. There doesn’t
seem to be any actual Falls anywhere
about, but no matter – the scenery is great, and the little visitors center is interesting. There is even an ice-cream buggy thereabouts.
Oh, did I
mention that the temperature was 103?
No comments:
Post a Comment